13 March 2018

Sweden: HRH Princess Adrienne Josephine Alice, Duchess of Blekinge

In the Council of State held at Stockholm Palace yesterday, 12 March 2018, King Carl Gustaf informed his government that his new granddaughter, who was born 3 days earlier, had received the name Adrienne Josephine Alice and the title Duchess of Blekinge. The name in daily use would be Adrienne.

As usual the choice of name immediately became a debate topic in newspapers, TV, blogs and other social media. It was not difficult to point at Queen Josephine, née Princess of Leuchtenberg (1807–1876) as the inspiration for the second name, and to Queen Silvia's mother Alice Sommerlath, née de Toledo (1906–1997) as the inspiration for the third name. Josephine is also the fourth name of Princess Madeleine, mother of the (now relatively) newborn princess, and also appear among the names of other members of the larger Bernadotte family. Princess Adrienne's aunt Crown Princess Victoria has Alice has her third name, as has Adrienne's great-aunt Princess Birgitta. Both Josephine and Alice are rather common names in royal European history.

But what about Adrienne? Of course it was once again a name no-one had guessed. It is has no roots in Swedish royal history and is French of origin, but considering the French roots of the Bernadotte family it is in my opinion a good choice, even if it is deemed «untraditional» in the European royal circle. So where have Princess Madeleine and Chris O'Neill taken inspiration from? In the Facebook group Royalty Digest Quarterly, its administrator – and editor of the magazine with the same name – Ted Rosvall mentioned yesterday that «The name ADRIENNE does appear in the Bernadotte family. The soon to be 102, Dagmar von Arbin, née Bernadotte af Wisborg, has two granddaughters by that name: JANA Adrienne De GEER [Gummeson] and ADRIENNE Ebba Sophie De GEER [Heurlin]. The former has a daughter named ADRIENNE Maria Madeleine Gummesson De GEER».

I followed up, after having read a Twitter message on the subject, by mentioning that one of Queen Josephine's ancestors (and of Princess Adrienne, of course) had the name Adrienne – Adrienne Dyel de Graville. There was some initial confusion about which Josephine I was actually referring to and the number of generations, and I have to take the main responsibility for that (such things happen when you write in haste during a short break), but eventually I think the connection was well settled:

And if that is not enough, Adrienne's parents were named Adrien Dyel de Graville and Adrienne Dyel de Vaudroque. However, we should take some reservations about the eldest generations, as the tweet mentioned above based its information on the ancestry table given in the Wikipedia article about Empress Josephine, and as of today it is completely without sources.

I should add that the genealogist and author Ted Rosvall in his book Bernadotteättlingar (2010) shows on p. 114 Queen Josephine's ancestry back to Marie Françoise Boureau de la Chevallerie (1709–1787), the granddaughter of Adrienne Dyel de Graville. Chantal Cosnay is responsible for the genealogy research in France.

So, if we for the sake of the argument accepts the connection mentioned above – Adrienne of the 17th century would then be Princess Adrienne's 11 x great-grandmother, if I have not messed up the counting completely – has Princess Madeleine consulted her ancestry table in order to find a suitable name? She has most likely knows her de Geer relatives and can have taken inspiration from them. It is difficult to say for sure before she or her husband should one day in the future decide to comment on the name choice.

Adrienne is, by the way, not a very common name in Sweden, but according to Statistics Sweden there are currently (as of 31 December 2017, that is) 305 women with the name Adrienne, of whom 141 have Adrienne as their call name.

Following the birth of Princess Adrienne, the line of succession to the throne of Sweden is as follows:

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This blog is written by Dag T. Hoelseth, a Norwegian historian specialising in royal history.
I have a Cand.philol. degree in history from the University of Oslo and graduated in 1997 with the dissertation Det nasjonale kongedømme. Det norske monarkiet 1905-1910, which dealt with the royal election in Norway 1905 and how the new dynasty "became Norwegian".
I am the author of Historisk utredning om Kongehuset, dets apanasjer og disponible statseiendommer, which was published on behalf of the Palace Committee in 2001. The report focused among others on the history of the Norwegian civil list from 1905 to the 1970s as well as the properties the king of Norway has to his disposal.
I have made contributions to several antologies and also written articles for various publications. More often I have operated "behind the scene", consulting newspapers etc. with background information.
Among my other interests are genealogy, Norwegian-American emigration history, US presidential history, traveling, football and ice hockey.